Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years - or longer.